


Sanctuary

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, F/F, First Meetings, Genderbending, Hurt/Comfort, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 01:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17294837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: Roza's happy for them. She really is. She's happy for everyone. Everyone is wonderful, and everything is great. Why else would she be hiding in a side room with borrowed champagne?





	Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> This fic caused me to make [bad decisions](https://www.instagram.com/p/BsE_1adnaJZ/).
> 
> So I wrote this… in… September… and then there was a coincidental and absolutely magnificent rash of fem!OTP fanart, and… just… thank you, FMA fandom, for being super awesome. ♥
> 
> Inspired by Marina because… like, who else screams fem!Roy quite that loud? And it's an AU, set later than canon, for reasons and purposes that will become clear. (The "reasons and purposes" were that I wanted to mess around with stuff, so I did. :'D)
> 
>   
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> 
> 
> _Drinking champagne_  
>  _Meant for a wedding_  
>  _A toast to the bride_  
>  _A fairytale ending_  
>  _Drinking champagne_  
>  _A bottle to myself_  
>  _Savor the taste_  
>  _Of fabricated wealth_  
>  — "Shampain" – Marina and the Diamonds –
> 
>   
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> 

Roza should count her blessings: there are a lot of them, whatever the hot curl of bitterness in the pit of her stomach, sinking slowly towards misery, would have her believe.

For one thing, Maes waited less than half a second after she’d finished saying “Traditionally, the position is called best _man_ , ergo I imagine that if you have any particularly old-fashioned family members, they may walk out” before he said “Then to hell with them.”

For another, Gracia is such a genuinely kind and decent human being that it never crossed her mind to take measures ensuring that she outshone every other woman present on her wedding day.  Further, she went to a great deal of trouble to find a variety of styles and a shade of powder blue that looked fairly flattering on everyone in the wedding party—rather than simply putting everyone in theme-colored potato sacks, the better to swan around between them looking like some sort of goddess.  Succeeding was, in itself, a considerable accomplishment; in addition to which, in her near-infinite mercy, she didn’t mandate heels.  There is even a minimal quantity of chiffon involved, although since stilettos double as knives like their namesake, Roza couldn’t pass up a pair of pumps in a color she’ll never wear again.

The assorted relatives haven’t been too aggressive, and it’s mostly the mutual friends that recognize her—mostly ones close enough to know better than to ask her about her own love life.  Fortunately, the men are by and large keeping their distance; less-fortunately, none of the bridesmaids seem flexible enough to be coaxed into some curiosity.

Most likely it’s all for the best.  None of them are really her type in any case, and as spectacular as wedding flings can be, one here wouldn’t be worth the possibility of awkward social engagements with Maes’s extended family later on.

There are more—blessings, that is; also, fish in the sea, but the tangled line and dead bait are a different problem for a different night.  She needs to be grateful for now: grateful that no one seems to have noticed her absence, or at least that no one cares; grateful that the disappearance of the bottle of champagne that she confiscated has also gone unnoticed so far; grateful that this beautiful hotel has a beautifully empty coat-room-parlor-side-room- _thing_ with a couch and a coffee table, so that she was able to collapse on the first and kick her feet up on the second.  She should be grateful she’s alive at all, to see this, to breathe, to blink, to curl her toes and stare up at the ceiling and feel the pinging tickle of the bubbles in her throat.  She should be grateful that people still invite her to weddings, with her reputation; she should be grateful she has a career, and friends, and that she looks like a million fucking cens in this gauzy only-a-moderate-disaster of a dress.

She should be grateful that this new lipstick has held up like a blood-red champion through unnumbered torments and a handful of hors d’oeuvres, even if she can’t trust her mascara to perform with similar panache, which means she can’t afford to cry.

She should be grateful that she enjoys her own company, since it’s all she can get most of the time.  She should be grateful that her body mass index keeps her so susceptible to alcohol; sneaking out of a wedding reception with a bottle of champagne in _each_ hand would have been embarrassing.  She should be grateful that the only man she’s ever loved—like _this_ , anyway; like a fact, like a fundamental, like a fever that never fades and just won’t die—is now married to a woman so incomprehensibly wonderful that Roza can’t even hate her.  Roza’s tried.  She can’t even manage to be angry.

It’s probably for the best.  She knows what anger turns her into.  She knows what she’s capable of in the grip of a combination of fear and fury.

It’s better this way.  Perhaps it will be even better tomorrow.  She doesn’t believe in luck, obviously, and she wouldn’t deserve any of the charitable kind if she did, but there’s a possibility that if she sloughs off the worst of the desolation of it tonight, she’ll awake tomorrow feeling newborn and stripped clean.

And if that doesn’t work, there are other sorts of stripping that rarely hurt matters, so she’ll start making phone calls as soon as the bullshit tears have dried.

She takes another swig out of the bottle, crosses her right ankle over the left, and looks up at the ceiling some more.  Interesting crown molding.  It’s nice, sometimes, to waltz around in ostentatious rooms wearing your finest and pretending that you own the place—there’s a giddy sort of glee to putting on airs and trying to get away with it.

Tonight she just feels like an imposter.

Tonight she knows she’s the same grubby little girl with scabs on her knees from falls and fighting; the same one who holed up in the cupboard under the sink with a pile of books when her parents started shouting; the same one who grew up pirouetting around the broken glass on the well-scarred hardwood of Christmas’s bar.  She’s the same one who let the promise of power consume her slowly, because she’d never known what it meant to be in control—the same one who burned human beings alive in the heat of the desert.  The same one who dragged herself to the brink of oblivion in the months afterward but just couldn’t find the strength to jump.

It’s all for the best.  Maes is better off with someone who deserves him; with someone who will make him softer, sweeter, gentler.  With someone who will bring out the warmth in him, rather than the incisive intellect and the knife-edge knack for strategy.

It’s for the best that he’s entered into a legally-binding lifelong civil contract with a woman who will be pleased and willing to make him pies and iron his shirts and listen to him bitch about bureaucracy after a rough day.  Even if the very concept didn’t send a shudder of antipathy through Roza at the sheer co-dependence of it all, she couldn’t do that for him—couldn’t be that; couldn’t become anything other than what she is, which is a hundred-thousand miles from what he needs.  The two of them together would be a cataclysm of chaotic ambition.  No one would ever remember to do the dishes or clean the bathroom or pay the bills, and the pair of them would die of mold exposure or something equally ridiculous engendered by their own negligence.

_Engendered_ is the long and short of it, isn’t it?

They’d die happy, though.

At least, she would.

But it’s fine—it’s great.  Everything is great.  Everything is great, and she’s grateful, and if she just keeps pouring champagne down her throat, it won’t be able to tighten up and choke her into weeping once and for all.  She’s a grown damn woman, a decorated officer of the Amestrian military, and a murderer besides.  She should be able to handle a little heartbreak.  Is it really so much to ask?

Tonight it is.

Perhaps tomorrow will be better.

Perhaps—

Perhaps a scuttling noise in the hall will herald the arrival of a tiny slip of a blonde wearing a red dress that trails on the floor behind her—partly deliberately, by the looks of it; partly because she’s wearing combat boots underneath it and isn’t tall enough to keep it off the floor.  She’s also wearing black opera gloves that extend up well past her elbows, and a black silk shawl wrapped around her shoulders, knotted just below her collarbones so that it hides nearly all of the best parts from view.  There is one mercy: her unbelievable gold hair is braided delicately back away from her face and wrapped up into an elegant twist at the back of her head, which has left innumerable adorable little pale wisps of it around her ears and exposed neck.  She has a _lovely_ neck.

She also has a lovely huddle just around the doorframe, peering out into the hall; and a lovely voice that grinds out “ _Fucker_ ”; and an absolutely incomparable ass.

Roza gathers her alcohol-addled willpower and sits up straight on the couch that she commandeered for wallowing.  She puts her bare feet on the floor, although she keeps her legs crossed in a way that’s more demure than it is demanding; and she leans forward to set the champagne bottle on the tabletop with a definitive _thunk_.

The girl startles so hard that she almost jumps out of her skin—which would be a terrible shame, since what of it Roza can see looks positively delicious—and then narrowly avoids tripping over the train of her dress as she spins around.

Roza balances an elbow on one knee, rests her chin on her hand, and offers the comfortable-cat smile.  “May I help you?”

The girl’s eyes dart to Roza’s cleavage, which was precisely what she intended; but after that they spend a long moment lingering on her face.  When their gazes meet, and fix, and _stay_ , there is something—strange.  Something fierce and electric and so challenging that a thrill like rolling thunder ripples up Roza’s spine.

“There’s a guy,” the girl says.  “He won’t—leave me alone.  Didn’t believe me when I said I had a boyfriend, and—”

“Come here,” Roza says, patting the couch beside her.  “Trust me.”

It is highly unlikely that it was the cleavage that won this bright young thing over—although there’s a possibility, on second thought, that it’s the sheer logic of the thing; any woman with a figure like Roza’s deals with a certain amount of unwarranted harassment, ergo her appearance makes her experience with the concept self-evident—but the girl crosses the room and drops onto the couch next to her in the space of half a dozen heartbeats.

Roza plants both of her own feet on the floor and gestures to the girl’s knees, which are pressed together almost as tightly as the arms she’s folded across her chest.  She is _precious_ , and even more devastating up close, and Roza is not sure which of them has made a worse mistake.  “May I?”

The girl’s eyes narrow.  They are not, as it looked at first glance, a gray or a pale brown: they are _amber_.  Roza’s inner romantic is prepared to lay down her life in service of them.  Roza’s less-inner nymphomaniac has alternate ideas about what and where to lie.  “May you wh—”

A noise from the hall makes the extraordinary eyes widen again, and then there’s a frantic gesture with both gloved hands.

“Whatever,” the girls says.  “Just—”

Roza catches both knees and lifts them, the better to twist the poor thing’s body towards her and then settle her legs over Roza’s thighs—halfway into her lap, in a position that will look unmistakably intimate.  She guides the girl’s left arm over her own shoulder for good measure, and there’s only a fraction of a second to glance down and register that one of the knees and calves draped over her is _cold_ —and so firm it can’t be flesh.  Automail?  Holy hell; what—

Another surprise, although this one seems more advantageous than the last: she recognizes the man who staggers through the door.

Second Lieutenant Peterson has always had a bit of a drinking problem.  Everyone knows it.  Roza would be a hypocrite of the highest order if she judged him for it, of course, but one thing she’s never had is a problem taking _no_ for an answer.

He stares at them, which is the first unsurprising thing to have happened in several minutes.  Roza stares back, as icily as she dares—which is glacial, to say the least.  In addition to outranking him in the first place, he’s in Investigations, and she’s on good terms with just about everyone in the whole damn department, other than this pathetic waste of oxygen and every other resource he has the audacity to consume.

“Good evening, Second Lieutenant,” she says, and she feels the girl’s hand clench into a fist where it rests against her back.  “I do hope you’re enjoying yourself?”

Rarely has she hoped anything less, but she tries to keep anything more than an insinuation of the truth out of her tone.

Peterson’s eyes slide to the girl curling a little closer to Roza.  Roza wraps an arm around her waist.

Well.  That was… not the _worst_ idea she’s ever had, but high on the list, and blocked out in flashing neon, or perhaps patterned on the wings of a venomous insect.  Perhaps written in blood on the wall of an uninhabited house rumored to be haunted by vengeful spirits who want her to fall flat on her face for unreasonably cute little gold-eyed angels that materialize in her champagne-soaked sojourns of self-pity.

“It’s nice,” Peterson says, slowly.  “Nice party.”

Another of Central Command’s worst-kept secrets is Roza Mustang’s propensity to sweep attractive young women off of their feet.  Everyone pretends not to know that most of her victims never find their feet—that is, reciprocate advances from their male counterparts—ever again.

“Glad to hear it,” she says, making sure that her unsettling calm maintains a hint of frigidity.  She learned from the best.  Rian would be proud.  “Are you looking for someone in particular?”

Peterson is not an especially bright man, and he’s dimmer still with more than his fair share of the open bar’s offerings swimming through his system—which is why he glances openly at the girl in Roza’s arms and _licks his lips_ before he pauses and says, “No, Colonel.  Just… getting some air.”

Roza can’t ignore the way her stomach just turned.  She has to channel some of that energy somewhere; she has to release some measure of it before it poisons her façade, and…

She’ll apologize later for stroking her fingertips through the gold-sparking flyaways at the back of the girl’s beautiful little neck.  It’s a bit more forward than most of the rest of this, and a bit more personal—which will hammer the point home for Peterson, yes, but it’s still rather selfish.

“It is a bit crowded in there,” Roza says.  “I suppose that’s what happens when you let two people who are each wonderfully popular in their own right tie the knot.  Are you looking for anyplace in particular?”

His eyes flick to the girl just once more before they lower to the plush carpet and stay there.  He mumbles something indistinguishable that sounds like it ends in “Sir”, and then he slinks back out into the hallway, and his footsteps fade out into silence.

It occurs to Roza that this leaves her with two arms full of a beautiful young bachelorette and quite a lot of explaining to do.

All in all, she’s had significantly worse Saturday nights.

Cautiously, attempting to avoid making it look anything like a rejection—feelings tend to be rather fallible about recalling the circumstances in situations like this—she releases the girl from her embrace.  “I’m so sorry,” she says, a bit more quickly than she’d like; champagne does so like to scuttle her timing.  “I got a bit… carried away.”

The shift of her arms shatters the crystalline sanctity of the moment and breaks the spell: the next thing she knows, the girl has scrambled backwards to curl up on the opposite end of the couch, knees tucked up against her chest, boots atop the cushion.

“No, no, um,” the girl says, looking everywhere but at Roza while crimson climbs her cheeks.  “It’s—fine.  It—thanks.  You saved my ass.  I mean—I couldn’t get rid of him.  He just kept _following_ me, and my sister couldn’t come—she was invited, obviously, but she didn’t want… it’s complicated.  Anyway—she made me swear on… something real important that I wouldn’t hit anybody even if they _really_ deserved it, so I couldn’t just kick his ass and be done with it, and I’m pretty sure he works with Mr. Hughes or something, too, and—”

“Hey,” Roza says.

The girl blinks, swallows, and risks a look at her.  “What?”

Roza holds out the bottle of champagne.

“Oh,” the girl says.  “Thanks.”

She takes it in her left hand, hefts it, and then starts chugging from the bottle.  She almost chokes on it, makes a respectable recovery, and then lowers it significantly lighter, shuddering hard.

“This shit’s _nasty_ ,” she says.  “I mean—thanks, but—”

“No, you’re right,” Roza says, taking the bottle and swilling it a bit when the girl offers it back.  “Tastes like carbonated stale cake.  Like pretending to celebrate.”

The girl’s eyes harden, sharpen, and narrow again.  “You were doing a pretty good job pretending two hours ago.”

“I know,” Roza says, letting herself sink back into the couch now that the charade of dignity and a mostly admirable character is more or less up.  “That was their real wedding present.”

The eyes are like firebrands now, and the back of Roza’s neck prickles.  How positively _delicious_.  “What’s so wrong with it?”

“With the marriage?” Roza asks.  “Absolutely nothing.  It’s wonderful.  The part of me that’s decent and compassionate is genuinely delighted.  There’s nothing wrong with _them_ ; I’m just a terrible human being.”

The appropriate response to such a remark, in ordinary company, would be some startled but relentlessly polite variation on _Of course you’re not_ or _Don’t say things like that_.

This girl evidently didn’t get that memo—she just watches Roza for several seconds and then offers a slow, thoughtful nod.

Ouch.

“Well,” she says, “point is, you can have the rest of it.”  A jerk of her chin towards the champagne confirms Roza’s suspicion that they’ve jumped topics again; there’s something invigorating about not knowing where they’ll end up next.  Usually iron-gripped control and perfect prediction of every conversation is Roza’s bread and butter—and survival—but tonight… “Al made me promise I wouldn’t drink too much, either.  She said it makes me weird.”

“I tend to think that weirdness is the outward indication of an interesting mind,” Roza says.

The girl raises her eyebrows.  “Said like somebody who got sick of gettin’ called weird after a while.”

“No comment,” Roza says.

“So how do you know ’em?” the girl says.  “Gracia and Mr. Hughes, I mean.”

“Maes has been my best friend for longer than I care to specify,” Roza says.  “You?”

“Gracia used to babysit us,” the girl says.  “Me and my sister.  When we were real small.  She stayed in touch after my mom died.  She’s really amazing.  Like, _really_.”

“I know,” Roza says, and it hardly even sticks in her throat.

“Wait,” the girl says.  “That shitheel—he said ‘Colonel’.  Right?  Are you—you’re Roza, aren’t you?”

Roza fights to turn up the corners of the grimace so that it will bear a passing resemblance to a grin.  “At your service.  Frankly, I’m surprised we haven’t met.  I haven’t seen many people I wasn’t already acquainted with tonight.”

“We were livin’ in Dublith for a long time,” the girl says.  “And I’m studying in South City now.  It’s a little too far to visit as much as we’d like and all, and my course schedule’s _stupid_ , so… yeah.  And I, uh.”  She works her jaw, glancing faux-casually at the wall.  “Was… running a little late tonight.  I made it to the ceremony, obviously, but it was sort of a… close thing, so I ended up way in the back.”

Something about the slant of her shoulders and the spark in her eye gives Roza a strange premonition that neither of them would make it out of this room alive if she mentioned the fact that not even the red-flag-colored dress would make it easy to notice this tiny concentration of spitfiery spirit from any considerable distance.

“But I’m Ed,” the very, very petite being in question says, holding out her left hand.

If a grown woman—albeit a young one with some idiosyncratic interpretations of how the social contract applies to small-talk—offers an unusual variation on the traditional handshake, it must be for a good reason.  Roza concentrates on making the motion of reaching across the length of the couch with her own left hand look as natural as possible.  That focus conspires with the bubbles dancing their sparkly way through her system and distracts her.

“Ah,” she says.

Ed’s eyes narrow again.  Instead of shaking and letting go, she tightens her grasp on Roza’s hand.  “What does that mean?”

Ed has an extremely strong grip.  “Nothing,” Roza says.  “Nothing in particular, at any rate; just that… I’ve heard about you before.  Here and there.  Glowing praise.”

“Bullshit,” Ed says.

“It’s _Gracia_ ,” Roza says.  “What do you mean, ‘bullshit’?  She has glowing praise for the mailman when he forgets her package at the office, and it ends up arriving a full week late.”

Ed eyes her again.  “For a second there, I thought you were trying to give me a compliment, but then I think you got lost.”

Roza succumbs to the impulse to despair for a moment or two before she recovers.  Ed is still gripping her hand, which is much less unpleasant than the last hostage situation she was involved in.  “What I _meant_ to say was… what are you studying in South City?”

Ed’s sardonic expression makes it painstakingly clear that she was not taken in by that clumsy segue, but that she’ll be taking pity on Roza all the same.  She finally releases Roza’s captured hand.  “Chemistry.  All I really want to do is alchemy, but they don’t have a real degree in it, so I’m doing it on the side as a secondary specialization sort of a thing.  And anyway, everybody says the only way you can make any money with alchemy is as a State Alchemist, and my… a member of my extended family in Dublith said she’ll break my neck with her bare hands if I join the military, so… at least this way I have a fallback plan.”

“That’s very sensible,” Roza says around the choking bramble growing in her throat.  “The money isn’t good enough to be worth the trouble.”

Ed blinks.

Then she beams like a small and utterly enamored sun, and for the first time in over a decade, for a solitary moment, Roza does not regret enlistment.

“What’s it like?” Ed asks.  “What are the missions like?  What kind of cool shit do you get to do and make and stuff?  I know the whole gig with tracking down rogue alchemists and getting into these super-climactic battle sequences is all dime-store novel crap, but—I mean, is there stuff like that?  Adventures and stuff?  Where you get into a bind and have to improvise your way out and make something the bad guys just _never_ would’ve expected out of stuff that’s lying around?”

“Ah,” Roza manages.  It—hurts.  It hurts trying to swallow the thickly-thorned vines twinning their way up her esophagus; so many of the stupid, old, tired dreams that she’d thought she’d laid to rest just caught fire in the deepest caverns in her chest.  It’s so dark in those forgotten places that she hasn’t seen them in what feels like an eon—a lifetime; a geologic age.  But they’re there.  She can feel them, now.  And she can smell the smoke.  “It… not so much of that anymore, I’m afraid.  They trick you, really; they convince you that you should try to get promotions, but the higher your rank is, the taller your stack of forms to fill out.”

Ed wrinkles her nose.  She really is absolutely darling.  Roza gets the feeling that she would receive the sole of a combat boot to her sternum if she said as much.  “I guess that sorta makes sense.  All that paper isn’t gonna push itself or whatever.”

“Unfortunately not,” Roza says.  There’s a twist of something in her—something so long-buried it feels half-foreign, but everything that remains is just so _familiar_ — “What’s your favorite thing?  About chemistry.  Or about alchemy.  About both.”

Curiosity.

That’s what this is.

This is the first time in remotely recent memory that she’s stumbled up against a mind that she truly, genuinely, passionately wants to pick.

“Oh,” Ed says.  She stares into space for the length of a held breath, and then, slowly, she starts to unfold—she crooks her left arm up and lays it along the back of the couch, lowering her knees and tilting them sideways until her feet dangle off the edge of the couch, and a segment of the train of her skirt unfurls past them to spill out on the floor.  “I dunno.  Everything?  Kind of everything.  I just—I really like the math parts; there’s something just so damn satisfying about balancing an equation.  Feels like you’re—I dunno, reconciling some tiny piece of the entropy in the universe or something, even though it’s purely theoretical.  I _really_ like experiments.  Especially when we get to blow shit up.  But all of it’s… most of all, I like how it just… fits.  How it makes stuff make sense.  I like things that explain the world, sort of break it down to its component parts—that’s the alchemy talking, I guess.  My whole life’s just been this compulsion to find out what’s _there_.  Understand stuff.  Make something new out of it.  And being able to analyze the universe on a molecular level is fucking great for that.”

Right.  Curiosity hurts, too.  Or the vacuum left behind it does.

“You said he didn’t believe you,” Roza says.

Ed shakes her head fractionally, like she’s surfacing from a dream.  And Roza remembers, and it aches—back when trains of thought were so bright and streaming and fascinatingly complex, so _worthwhile_ , that they dragged her up into the clouds, and clearing the fog felt physical.  “Huh?”

“Peterson,” Roza says.  “You said he didn’t believe you when you said you had a boyfriend.”

Ed stares.  It seems like an affirmative stare.

Roza swallows.

Then she shifts, angling her body to create the perfect curve from canted shoulders to tilted hips, leaned forward ever so slightly to maximize the real estate.

She smirks.

She arches an eyebrow.

She tosses her hair.

“Do you?” she asks.

Ed’s eyes have widened progressively further with each artful addition to the display, and her fingers have curled into the plush of the couch back.

“Um,” she says, voice noticeably fainter and higher than a moment ago.  “S—sure.  Yeah.  Sure.”

“Pity,” Roza purrs.  She leans back, releasing a slow deep breath, turning her imploring eyes towards the heavens.  “What’s his name?”

“Um,” Ed says.  “I… Maybe… I-don’t-have-a-boyfriend-exactly.”

“That sounds exotic,” Roza says.  “Where’s he from?”

“Are you asking me out?” Ed says.  “In, like, the stupidest, most roundabout possible way?”

“It’s called ‘tact’,” Roza says.

“No, it’s not,” Ed says.  “Al tells me what tact is at least once a week.  This ain’t it.”

“Fair enough,” Roza says.  “It’s called ‘desperation’.  Sometimes they’re pretty much the same.  How long are you in town?”

Ed works her mouth for a moment, eyes still suspicious.  “Just for the weekend.”

Roza smiles at her—more softly this time.  “May I buy you a drink before you go?”

“Coffee?” Ed asks.  “Or booze?”

“What would you say to one of each?” Roza asks.

“I’d say they must be paying you all right after all,” Ed says.

“Is that a yes?” Roza asks.

“I dunno yet,” Ed says.  “Are the drinks gonna be good?”

“Yes,” Roza says.  “I guarantee it.  I don’t have time for substandard drinks or substandard dates.  I will do my damnedest not to burden you with either.”

Roza can almost see the scale arms shifting behind Ed’s eyes.  “No bullshit?  And if I change my mind, I change my mind, and that’s okay, and I can bail?”

If Roza dwells on what a terrifying prospect it is that this is a condition for Ed’s acceptance, she will lose her cool, and the whole seductive smolder aesthetic will dissipate alongside it.  “No bullshit.  You call the shots.”

“Maybe literally,” Ed says.  “With the second drink.”

At least that makes Roza’s mouth quirk towards a fuller smile.  “Quite.”

“Okay,” Ed says.  “Deal.”

She extends her right hand this time, and there is a challenge in her eyes.  Roza reaches out to meet her, expecting…

Well, expecting a retraction; expecting to have the hand whipped away with a giggle and an _Only kidding, did you really think I’d slum it with the likes of_ you _?_

At least, something other that than the chilly compression of automail fingers wrapped tight around hers.

She blinks up at Ed in surprise, and the challenge has metamorphosed into a delicate sort of defiance—the kind of _I dare you_ held up as a barrier, as a reckless attempt to preempt the anticipated response.

Is it disgust that she’s bracing herself for, or a much simpler discomfort?  Roza can imagine that a lot of people too polite to express revulsion would think themselves entitled to open unsettlement.  That probably wounds deeper, in the long run—anyone who demonstrates outright contempt exposes a streak of unrealistic cruelty, and their opinions can be discounted.  It must cut further, over time, to have otherwise rational people try and fail not to consider Ed some kind of freak.

Funny, too, in a sick sort of way, how none of the things that matter are evident on the outside, and yet it’s all that any of them have to go on, at first.

Roza turns Ed’s hand gently, lifting her own left hand to stroke a fingertip very lightly down the back of Ed’s where it lies aligned with hers, palm to palm.  Even with the silken fabric of the glove in between, she can tell that the workmanship is exquisite.

“Was it during the war?” she asks.

“No,” Ed says.  Roza doesn’t look up—that’s too obvious—but she scans the top edge of her vision, and Ed’s face has contorted with the saddest sort of cautiously hopeful confusion— “You say that like Mr. Hughes does.  ‘The war’.  Were you there?”

“Yes,” Roza says.  She grazes her fingertips down to the wrist, where several pieces fit together, and then carefully clasps Ed’s hand between her two before releasing it.  “Everything that people have told you about being a State Alchemist… they’re probably right.”

Ed makes a soft _Hm_ noise in the back of her throat.

Then she plants both hands on the couch cushion and uses that leverage to scoot closer—and then closer still—and then there’s barely a splayed-hand’s breadth between their hips, and every inch of her except the metal parts is radiating warmth.

“Hey,” she says.  “If you tell me your shitty story, I’ll tell you mine.”

Roza can’t help smiling, even though it feels the slightest bit like having a gun pointed directly at her forehead.  “Equivalent exchange?”

“Yeah,” Ed says.

“Are you sure?” Roza asks.

“No,” Ed says.  “But if there’s one thing I’ve figured out so far, it’s that being sure is pretty overrated.  How much of that crap champagne do we have left?”

_We_.  A word that looks tiny and ordinary, and yet is never, ever either of those things.

Roza picks up the bottle.  “Enough.”

“Good,” Ed says.  “Where do you want to start?”

  


* * *

  


It is not the first time Rian has waited for a social event to wind down and then slipped away to go in search of his C.O., who disappeared several hours prior.  The last holdouts finally tired of dancing about half an hour ago, and everyone who hasn’t sensibly gone home to sleep has dragged the dinner chairs towards the edge of the dance floor, making a vague and slightly lopsided ring to continue the aimless conversations.  Maes and Gracia seemed engrossed in the story Fuery launched into a few moments ago, and even if they hadn’t been, they’ve only had eyes for each other tonight, so Rian doesn’t imagine that he’ll be missed.

Roza was, although no one said anything outright.  Rian’s not sure how much most of the others understood, but—just this once—he doesn’t begrudge her the absence.  She held herself together with remarkable grace and poise for all of the most important parts of the evening; Rian suspects that even a lot of people who know her rather well wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss.  He’s proud of her, in a strange and wistful sort of way.  He wishes there wasn’t so much pain to smother in the first place, but smother it she did, and seamlessly, in the hopes of letting others enjoy their happiness.  He’s known since they were children how gentle she really is underneath, but it’s rare nonetheless to watch it manifest so plainly as it did tonight.  She made a tremendous sacrifice that no one will ever appreciate, and she asked for nothing in return but to be left alone.

It is also not the first time Rian has found her, of a midnight, on a couch in a back room, with her arms around a pretty girl.

It _is_ the first time—at least in recent memory—that both of the involved parties have been fully-clothed and sound asleep.

Rian stands very still, which is, he has always felt, a rational reaction to predators and to sources of substantial bewilderment alike.  Roza is often both simultaneously, so this is nothing new.

He saw this girl hugging Gracia earlier—although at the time, the girl was wearing the black gloves now straggling out across the unoccupied cushion beside her.  Her left arm is tucked in between her side and Roza’s, but the right—which sparks silver in the dim lamplight—is stretched out across Roza’s waist, fingers curled into the pale blue fabric of Roza’s dress.  Roza’s arm is wrapped around her shoulders, and their heads rest against each other, and…

And Rian has no choice but to slip silently out of the room again—just for a moment.

Just long enough to borrow Maes’s camera without offering an explanation, snap one careful photo, and return it with an only marginally more helpful “You may want that later.”

Upon his third entrance into the coat room, Rian makes sure his footfalls are audible, and he clears his throat as loudly as he dares.

“Sir,” he says when Roza stirs a little.

She blinks owlishly, tensing all over as she starts to straighten up—

But the girl leaned against her makes a faint noise of mild distress, and instantaneously her attention zeros in on that.  She murmurs something Rian can’t make out, brushing the girl’s hair out of her eyes and adjusting the scarf draped around her before turning to look at Rian.

“Ah,” Roza says, blankly.  “Is it time to go?”

“Unless you’re…” It’s been a long night.  Rian’s brain is very tired of generating pleasantries.  “…occupied?”

Roza looks at the girl, whose cheeks are going nearly as scarlet as her dress.  “Where are you staying?  Do you need a ride back?”

“I was gonna stay at Gracia’s place,” the girl says, rubbing at her eye with her left hand and then staring in utter betrayal at her knuckles when she sees the black makeup she just smeared all over them.  “But… they spotted me for a room here for the rest of the weekend, so…”

“May I walk you up to your room?” Roza asks.

Rian swallows the sigh.  It’s good to see her… well, it’s too early for “happy,” in a situation like this, but—hell, it’s good to see her acknowledging any emotions free of the frosted-over numbness that she plasters on top of suppressed pain.

“I’ll bring the car around,” he says.  “Slowly.”

Roza grins at him, and she looks so young and bright and open for a long moment that it makes him think…

It makes him think a lot of _maybe_ s.  And it makes him like the way they sound.

“You are a thousand times better than I deserve, Lieutenant,” she says.

“Two-thousand, I believe,” he says.

“Probably edging close to three,” she says, offering both hands to help draw the rather dazed-looking girl up off the couch.  “This is Rian Hawkeye, whom I think I mentioned—my life, soul, brain, and best officer.  Rian, this is Ed.”

“Hullo,” Ed manages.  The smudged makeup looks a bit like a black eye.  Somehow it’s cute.  “S’nice to meet you.  Heard a lot.  Or a bit.  Heard stuff.”

Rian is going to go home, have a drink, and sleep for a year.  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”

“What room is it?” Roza’s asking as she collects the abandoned gloves and shepherds her stumbling charge off towards the hall.  “Do you have your key, dear heart?  They’ll know at the front desk even if you don’t; or Gracia will know, or—”

Rian glances around to see if they’ve forgotten anything else, but it looks like Roza retained all of her accoutrements, even if she seems to have hurled her heart out the window at the first possible opportunity.  She hasn’t done that in a long, long time, either.  He hopes—fervently—that maybe, just this once, she won’t find cause to regret it.

He does discover what might be a very fortuitous bottle of champagne on the table—perhaps he can have his drink now and—

Of course it’s empty.

Damn.

Well, Roza owes him several hundred drinks by now: several hundred and one, he imagines, after tonight.  One of these days he’ll just have to collect.


End file.
